OLYMPIA — Rep. Jim Buck says he will defer to Gov. Christine Gregoire over who will investigate the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard fiasco — just as soon as he sees her plan.
Gregoire probably will reveal today the form her probe will follow, said Rep. Lynn Kessler.
Buck, R-Joyce, and Kessler, D-Hoquiam, are the representatives of the 24th District that includes the graving yard site on the Port Angeles waterfront.
Both have called for an investigation into how the state Department of Transportation spent $58.8 million on the graving yard with little to show for it but controversy.
Gregoire initially answered their call by saying she would discuss with legislators the possibility of an investigative task force. She then decided last week instead to let the transportation department conduct its own inquiry.
On Friday after meeting with Kessler, the House Democratic leader, she reversed and promised to open her own investigation.
Audit board
Buck in the meantime had called for a probe of transportation’s actions by the newly formed state Transportation Performance Audit Board.
He said Sunday he will withdraw his request if he is content with Gregoire’s proposal — and if other members of the state House Transportation Committee are similarly satisfied.
Kessler said Gregoire’s short-lived plan — which might have included a Transportation Commission open meeting in Port Angeles — might have produced more hard feelings than hard answers.
Kessler on Sunday also said Gregoire will recommend replacing Tim Thompson, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks who moderated last week’s meeting on the graving yard issue in Olympia.
It was attended by about 40 Port Angeles city and civic leaders, legislators, labor representatives and members of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
The tribe in December urged the Transportation Department to halt construction of the graving yard after archaeologists discovered more than 300 intact ancestral Klallam burials on the 22.5-acre site just east of the Nippon Paper Industries USA mill.
Hoh River land corridor
Thompson, a partner in a Tacoma negotiation and mediation firm, was instrumental in discussions last year about a proposed Hoh River conservation corridor that was highly controversial among private property owners on the river and has drawn criticism from both Kessler and Buck.
In September, Dicks announced the federal Interior Department would buy 1,775 acres in the Hoh valley from consenting property owners. Other owners had expressed fears that the valley eventually would be annexed by Olympic National Park.
Kessler said Thompson’s credibility might be affected in the graving yard discussion because of the Hoh dispute, although she said he had done a masterful job of chairing last Wednesday’s Olympia meeting.
Buck on Sunday echoed Kessler’s reservations about Thompson, who he thought might feel obligated to Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald, who hired him to negotiate options for what might be done with the abandoned graving yard.
Thompson was unavailable for comment.
